


i'm the light blinking at the end of the road (blink back to let me know)

by piratekelly



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Episode Related, Introspection, M/M, Spoilers for the s6 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:47:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7961254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratekelly/pseuds/piratekelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the crash, Steve contemplates exactly how much of his identity is tied up in the Navy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm the light blinking at the end of the road (blink back to let me know)

**Author's Note:**

> Saw a slightly spoilery pic for 7x01 from Lenkov's instagram and thought: Hm. Let's explore this. Title from Panic at the Disco's "Always".

\--

Steve is no stranger to life threatening injuries. No one gets through their time as a SEAL without shedding at least a little blood along the way. He, himself, has never been grievously injured in the line of duty, but he’s carried his fair share of fallen soldiers back to safety, has tied more makeshift tourniquets in the middle of the desert than he wants to remember. Those moments aren’t the ones that keep him up night after night for months after he transfers to the Reserves.

He’s had to watch his own men die, his best friend in the entire world, men he’s trained and served with for months, even years, and is expected to move on like nothing ever happened. “Casualties are to be expected,” he’s told; “It’s part of the job,” he’s reminded. But every time he had to listen to Taps, a small part of him fell away, until he stopped forming connections at all, never became more than Lieutenant Commander McGarrett to any of the men he worked with. It was easier that way, he told himself. You can’t miss the people you bury if you never get to know them.

Those memories, those are the ones that wake him up in the night. The sickness he feels in his stomach when he remembers being thankful that he hadn’t been the one to die that day and immediately feeling like shit for entertaining the thought.

Steve has been trained to compartmentalize, to thrive in chaos, to keep his head straight and his mind clear when he’s in the middle of an hours long firefight. He makes his move first and asks questions later. That’s how the job is done.

Years later, on a plane above the Pacific, Steve acts, just as he’s been trained to.

He’s been asking a lot of questions ever since.

\--

Steve has been having dreams. It’s possible that they’re memories, but he can’t be sure; he’s heard the story of their harrowing journey to land so many times in the last few days that he can’t tell the difference between the few things he knows for sure and the many things he’s heard since he first woke up. What he knows is that every night, shortly after he closes his eyes, he's back in that pilot seat, sunglasses in one hand and controls in the other, feeling the bullets tear through his stomach all over again, a searing pain like fire in his belly as he started bleeding out fast, too fast.  

He remembers Danny reaching out for him, terrified, a look of abject horror on his pale face. Remembers Danny begging him to stay conscious, to just keep breathing, to stay with him, to hang on just a little while longer because he doesn’t know how to fly this plane and he  _ needs  _ him. Steve remembers feeling the life seeping out of him like the blood flowing freely from his wounds. Remembers wanting to tell Danny that fighting to stay and being able to make that happen are two different things.

Instead, he simply tells Danny he's dying. Steve has been prepared for this moment; if he’s being honest, he’s surprised it hadn’t come sooner, considering the nature of their job. Casualties happen. They’re part of the job. He tries to say goodbye before he slips into unconsciousness but he’s too weak, blood loss taking everything it has out of him. All he knows is that the last thing he remembers with any kind of clarity is Danny telling him that he was not allowed to die that day.

Steve’s first thought upon waking up was that, of course, Danny always had to be right.

\--

The day before he’s due to be released, Steve finds himself in the hospital’s chapel. He’d been wheeling himself through the halls, feeling thankful for all the doctors and nurses who’ve taken care of him in this place that’s been his home for the last month. But for all the good he's encountered here, he's ready to be at home in his own bed. (Which, now that he thinks about it, will probably have to be relocated to the first level. Stairs are going to be an issue for a little while.) Danny’s around here somewhere, probably hanging out in the cafeteria with Charlie and Grace, and it’s good that they’re not together right now. Steve has too much on his mind, has too many questions he wants to ask that are just sitting on the tip of his tongue fighting to get out, and no one has ever been able to read him half as well as Danny can.

Danny, coincidentally, is at the center of a lot of those questions.

\--

_ A lot of what happened that day comes back in flashes. He remembers Danny's voice, bits and pieces of what he was saying as he tried to fly them home, remembers the force of the landing jolting him back to consciousness for one brief second before he woke up again in the hospital days later. _

_ Every night, though, another piece comes back to him, and what those memories imply scares him more than the prospect of dying ever has. _

"Consider yourself," Air Control had said. "Land in the water."

_ From what he can piece together from stories Kono and Grover have told him, Danny had told them in no uncertain terms that they were to clear the beach, and braced himself for impact. He'd done it for Steve, for Steve’s best chance of survival. He'd risked his own fucking life - a life that had two children and a big family back home who loved him enough to tell him to follow his daughter, no matter how far from them he’d be - on the off chance that Steve might survive the damage he’d already sustained to his internal organs and a brutal crash landing.  _

_ Steve wakes up after surgery to find Danny in the bed next to his, hooked up to monitors beeping out the steady cadence of Danny’s heart, and breathes a sigh of relief. They’re both alive and relatively unscathed, all things considered. There’s a lot to be thankful for today. _

_ And then he learns that Danny had given him part of his liver. Steve is considerably less calm after that. _

_ Danny had given Steve a part of himself. Not figuratively, not metaphorically, but literally; he now has a piece of Danny’s body inside him, and he doesn’t know how to react. A simple "thank you" would never be enough, he knows that, but how do you repay a person for something like donating an organ so that you can live? Dinner at Side Street hardly seems like adequate repayment for such an incredible gift. _

_ Steve forces himself to go back to sleep that night. They’ve been there for five nights now, and he hadn’t had a chance to talk to Danny since he first woke up. He has time to think on it. _

\--

“Yeah, yeah, I do have a choice. I’m gonna put this thing down on the beach.”

_ Steve wakes up in a cold sweat, the sheets of his hospital bed in complete disarray. He’s no stranger to waking up like this, slightly short of breath, heart pounding in his chest, but this isn’t his PTSD. This isn’t a nightmare, or a dream, or his subconscious playing tricks on him. This is real. Danny, sitting next to him in the cockpit, basically telling Air Control to take a hike so that he could attempt the impossible, all while operating a plane he doesn't know how to fly with hands that are covered in Steve's blood. Danny, that stubborn son of a bitch, had landed that plane. Steve assumes he did it mostly out of spite. _

“I do have a choice.”

_ And he did. Danny had made his choice. Made the choice to blow their cover to get immediate assistance, to ignore the safest landing option in order to get Steve to safety faster, to give him his fucking liver, and Steve, well. Steve has no idea what to do with that. _

\--

If Steve’s being honest, he doesn’t know what to do with a lot of things these days. Perhaps that’s why he’s in the chapel, of all places. 

Steve’s not a particularly religious person, but he’s been feeling adrift ever since he passed out on that plane, and any guidance would be welcome at this point. He doesn’t know what to do now that he’s not capable of a lot of things he could do just a month ago. Running long distances will be hard, there’s the pills and the no drinking and the altered diet and he’s just so  _ tired  _ all the time. He knows that his body is healing itself, is working double time to grow a new organ, but he feels worthless, like a weaker version of himself, and he hates it. He hates the fatigue, hates laying around all day, hates that his life now revolves around what time he takes his meds instead of how long it takes him to get through his daily two mile swim.

Hates that he’s been medically discharged from the Navy.

He hasn’t told anyone yet, but that’s because he doesn’t know how. He’s spent more than half his life in the military, had always intended to go back after he found Victor Hesse, to continue climbing the ladder until he felt good and done. He always wanted to be able to leave on his own terms, but as a Lieutenant Commander -  _ former _ , he reminds himself,  _ former Lieutenant Commander  _ \- in the Reserves, there wasn’t much reason to keep him on when he was never going to pass another physical again.

Steve McGarrett doesn’t know who he is now, and it scares the shit out of him.

For all the time he’s spent with Five-0, he’s never really considered himself a cop. He never went to the academy, never walked the beat, didn’t work his way through the ranks like Danny or Kono or Chin. He just came home to Hawaii, took a job heading up a special crimes task force, and never looked back. He’s never introduced himself as Officer McGarrett, but rather Commander. Five-0 knocks on a door, it’s Commander; they raid a warehouse, take an interview with political officials, what have you, he’s always addressed as Commander. He knows that being honorably discharged doesn’t strip him of his rank, but being referred to as Commander when he’s not actively in the military anymore leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

He has a hundred questions he wants to ask, but the one he needs answered more than anything is: Who is Steve McGarrett without the Navy?

This shouldn’t be as hard as it is. It’s not unheard of for a person’s life to change in an instant, to do a complete one-eighty from just the day before in the blink of an eye, but he never expected it to happen to him. Steve is a man who does things on his own terms, when he feels it’s right, and when he says it’s time. Those choices have been taken from him now, and all the plans he had for the future need to be altered now because of a few hours and a bullet hitting him in just the wrong place.

He doesn’t know if being involved with Five-0 alone is going to be enough.

So here he is, in a chapel, wearing a brand new Navy shirt that he received as a parting gift with his discharge papers, wondering what he’s going to do next. He just knows that he’s lucky to be alive, that he’s been given a second chance, and he probably shouldn’t waste it. So whatever his next step is, he hopes it leads to something good. He could use a little good in his life.

“Uncle Steve!”

Charlie’s voice startles him, but within a matter of seconds he’s got an armful of six year old boy and nothing could stop the smile from spreading across his face.

“Charlie, you have to be careful, remember?”

The little boy sighs, pulling back from Steve’s embrace. “Sorry, Daddy.”

“It’s okay, munchkin,” he replies as Grace pushes his wheelchair so that he’s beside Steve. “Why don’t you run to the vending machine with Grace and grab a snack for Uncle Steve. He’s looking a little thin these days.”

Steve discretely gives him the finger. Danny laughs and forks over a few singles before shooing Grace and Charlie back out the door.

They sit there in companionable silence, much like they’ve been doing between bouts of sleeping for the last few weeks, and it’s eerily reminiscent of how things were between them before the crash. They’ve talked about that, all the snapping and arguing and the general unpleasantness they were directing at each other. The air has since been cleared - after a lot of yelling and the nurses putting them in separate rooms for the next two days - but things still feel somewhat shaky between them in moments like this. 

He can’t pinpoint the exact moment when things started taking a sour turn between the two of them, but he can hazard a guess as to why it started. After years of basically living in each other’s pockets, of late night beers and emotional trauma and babysitting, he kind of realized that their relationship was starting to head in a direction that he wasn’t particularly prepared for. Steve’s no stranger to relationships with men, but there’s always been something different about what’s between him and Danny that he never expected it to happen. Because he’s Steve, he started distancing himself, making up excuses to not hang out, staying home when the team went out to celebrate closing a case, all in the name of figuring out what the hell he was going to do.

It’s one thing to start a relationship with your partner. It’s another thing altogether when said partner is your best friend and also maybe one of the great loves of your life. Dancing around it for the last two years hasn’t helped the situation at all. He made his decision a long time ago. He just hasn’t found the time to do anything about it.

“I found the letter on your bed. Figured I’d find you somewhere quiet.”

Steve nods, fingering the seam of his shirt. “It didn’t really come as a surprise.”

“Probably not,” Danny agrees. “But that doesn’t make it sting less.”

He really doesn’t have anything to say to that, because it’s true, so he lets the silence descend upon them once again. Danny’s fidgeting in his seat, obviously itching to ask him something, but Steve gets there first.

“Why’d you do it?” Danny hums in response. “Why’d you give me your liver?”

Danny pauses, sighs. “You know why, Steve.”

“Danny, just --”

“Steve, if you think, even for one second, that I wouldn’t do everything in my power to keep you alive, then you haven’t been paying attention.”

The problem is that he has, he just doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s never known anyone to love him so much that they’d do something like give him part of an organ. Or crash a plane on the beach. Or ignore a direct order so that he’d have a better, if small, chance to see the next day. He knows a grand gesture when he sees one, but this is so much more than that. This says “stick around, my kids love you” and “you’re not getting out of this that easy” and “please can we just take this chance already” all wrapped into one simple procedure.

“Okay.”

Danny chuckles, buries his face in his hands. “Really? That’s it? Just  _ okay _ ?”

“Yes, Danny,” Steve says, forcing his partner to make eye contact so that his meaning might get across. “It’s okay.”

The words hang in the air between them, waiting to be acknowledged as both the peace offering and the promise they were intended to be.  The ball is in Danny’s court now, and Steve waits, heart stuck in his throat, for Danny to respond.

“Alright,” he says. 

Steve exhales, heart soaring in his chest. He pauses for a moment, wanting his next statement to break the tension. “So are we surfing buddies for real now?”

“You schmuck,” Danny replies. Steve would be offended, but it sounds fond, so he lets it go.

Instead, he takes a deep breath and shifts his hand closer to Danny’s and gently brushes his pinky against Danny’s hand. The other man snorts softly, grins, and captures Steve’s hand with his own, linking their fingers together as they rest across the arms of their wheelchairs.

Maybe, after all of this, Steve can still be something. Maybe he can start by just not being alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own. Comments and kudos are love.


End file.
